Alien: Romulus (2024)

2.5

When I first saw the trailers for Alien: Romulus I was, shall we say, very very skeptical that the “House of Mouse” could successfully inject a new life into this franchise. Very. Skeptical.

And you know what? I was right.

Look, I’m going to just cut right to the chase and let it all hang out. If you haven’t seen it, pretty much the rest of the review is going to be spoilerful and if you dont’ want it spoiled, just stop now.

Sigh. Let’s get this over with.

So yeah, the movie takes place somewhere in between 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens. There’s a derelict spacecraft just chock full of the little buggers (how convenient) and it also happens to be a target for a heist. They all want to escape the shithole planet/work camp they’re stuck in, and they need the “cryo fuel” on board the derelict to escape the full distance.

You can pretty much guess the rest of the story. Rain (Cailee Spaeny), along with her android, “Andy” (David Jonsson) and a few friends, Tyler (Archie Renaux), Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Navarro (Aileen Wu) set out to get the fuel, and wouldn’t you know it, they step in a giant pile of alien doo doo.

It’s at this point that pretty much any adherence to established Alien “rules” go right out the window. The face huggers are somehow still alive in these tanks. Once they get on your face, it takes like a minute for them to lay their eggs, and then like another minute to hatch. Then the things skitter away and start shedding their skins until woohoo they’re suddenly full on xeno’s!! I mean seriously, they screwed that pooch hard. IT TAKES TIME for the eggs to hatch, for the face huggers to detach, for the bursters to grow, and then for the little cutie pies to get big enough. Like DAYS. Not like the couple of hours (was it even that long?) it feels like these guys are involved. Did nobody else watch the same movies I did?

Oh, and then…. are you ready? They whip out a simply TERRIBLE CGI or AI (or combo) version of Ash, along with some awful approximation of Ian Holm’s acting. FFS this was so frustrating seeing an actor of his stature being just wrung out like an old towel and the damp carcass thrown out there like it was good enough. You should be ashamed, Disney, Alvarez, and anyone else who actually thought this was a good idea. They literally borrowed frames from Alien (trust me you can tell) and then (waves hands around randomly) just filled in the blanks between frames. Its so cringey and bad that every single time “Rook” (yeah, I guess to go with “Bishop” or something, I don’t know) is on the screen, you’re just begging for him to go away again. Practical effects with maybe a CGI/mo-cap facial thing (ala Snoke) would maybe have been better. This part alone just wrecks this movie for me.

Then there’s the oh-so clever “out” that involves bending the laws of physics to fit the script. As they contort themselves through a floating zero-G mess of acid-blood that somehow just sticks in place… Honestly there’s a whole lot of wrong going on with their “science” and how gravity works. I guess you’re just supposed to “roll with it” or something. I cannot.

Then there are the callbacks. Oh my god, there are so many callbacks. Some subtle, some not so much. The homage to the Aliens: Director’s Cut “Sentry Gun” scene was just patently in your face. As was the ENTIRE sequence with Rain headed off to cryo-sleep. Like they just cut and pasted the entire bloody thing.

The final tiny bit of icing on this increasingly un-tasty cake is the insistence that we drag the “engineers” from Prometheus/Covenant back into the fray. If you thought “pumpkinhead” from Resurrection was bad… just you wait.

That’s not to say there weren’t some good points. Unfortunately NONE of them had to do with the plot or story. All of them have to do with the production. It’s a gorgeous bit of scifi, and has all the bells and whistles to try and put you back into the Alien-verse. Pseudo CRT’s (they didn’t look exactly right)… The silent and slow title reveal, the creepy external shots. And yeah, the xeno’s look terrifying and awesome. Even though they are mere minutes old. The sound effects alone are enough to put you back “in the mood” if you will. But, Oh LOOK BLUE FLOOR FOG LAZERS.

But, in the end, you just walk out going, WHY. WHY DID YOU DO THIS!? It feels like a cheap circus ride in comparison to where Scott was (is? Idk) attempting to steer the franchise. Where we were starting to explore the genesis of the entire Alien-verse, (and YEAH, RAISED BY WOLVES IS INCLUDED) this is just a crummy little commercial. A fricking Tiktok video that we watch, go “cool I guess” and then just forget about.

I hear that Disney has bigger plans, along with a Disney+ series coming down the pipe. Please, please, stop with this cheap garbage, and do the source material some sort of justice.

Or you can just continue with this sort of “veneer” production (*cough*TheAcolyte*cough*) and make the easy money.

Ugh, I had high hopes for this. That maybe, just maybe they’d pull off something worthy of the franchise. Instead they just cheapened it to the point of it being nothing but a crappy carnival ride. Best I can do is 2.5 / 5. Those points were for production value (sound/picture) alone.

And yeah, this was pretty much the thing that got me back writing (and making videos again!) so…. hey, I’m back! or whatever. I’ll be making a video to go along with this real soon now.

Alien: Romulus (2024)

the veneer looks and sounds great

ignores basic xeno "facts"

so much screaming

2.5